Recovery Essentials
- olivierbranford
- Sep 21, 2024
- 18 min read
Updated: Jan 25
It doesn't matter what cards you're dealt with in life: It's what you do with those cards. And when you are on a healing journey in recovery, you hold all the aces. Truly.
Surrender all thoughts that are not of your Higher Power. Simply let go and find your flow. Take intuitively inspired action and let go of the outcome.
We have been taught that freedom is the freedom to pursue our petty, trivial desires. Real freedom is freedom from our petty, trivial desires. Addiction is giving up everything for one thing. Recovery is giving up one thing to get everything. Recovery builds your solid foundations.
Serve others. Service is love. Yoko Ono said that "Healing yourself is connected with healing others." David Hume wrote that "It's when we start working together that the real healing takes place... it's when we start spilling our sweat, and not our blood."
Your rebirth gives you opportunities to share your good fortune with others. Be attentive to everyone today.
Russell Brand said in his book 'Recovery', which is in my 'Suggested Reading List' that “Addiction is when natural biological imperatives, like the need for food, sex, relaxation, or status, become prioritised to the point of destructiveness. It is exacerbated by a culture that exploits this mechanic as it's a damn good way to sell Mars bars and Toyotas.”
You can never quench your spiritual craving through material means.
Seek spiritual bliss, not oblivion. Enlightenment is simply when all the moments of bliss connect. Pain is the touchstone of spiritual progress. So let's ask?:
Do you need to be in recovery?
What does recovery look like?
What are the benefits of recovery?
Recovery and you
Do you need to be in recovery?
Everyone is an addict. If you don't believe me, try taking the iPad off your three year old. There are over 200 different 12 step groups. In AA alone there are 2 million members. There are behavioural addictions, alcohol, and substance addictions. Behavioural addictions include gambling, workaholism, sex and codependent relationships, the internet, social media, gaming, external validation, food (anorexia and bulimia), shopping, and many, many more. They all have the same causes, namely childhood trauma, and they all have the same ultimate consequences - namely death. Dr Gabor Maté, the world's foremost authority on addiction, says that if you think that you are in only one fellowship, you are lying to your Self. Only three percent of addicts become sober. The remainder dice with death.
The instinct that drives compulsion is universal. It is an attempt to solve the problem of disconnection, buried emotional pain, alienation, tepid despair: The problem is ultimately 'being human' in an environment that is curiously ill-equipped to deal with the challenges that entails.
We crave connection, but so much of the time we are not alive, neutralised. Russell Brand wrote “I don’t wake up in the morning and think, ‘Wow, I’m on a planet in the Milky Way, in infinite space, bestowed with the gift of consciousness, which I did not give myself, with the gift of language, with lungs that breathe and a heart that beats, none of which I gave myself, with no concrete understanding of the Great Mysteries, knowing only that I was born and will die and nothing of what’s on either side of this brief material and individualised glitch in the limitless expanse of eternity and, I feel, I feel love and pain and I have senses, what a glorious gift! I can relate, and create and serve others or I can lose myself in sensuality and pleasure. What a phenomenal mystery!’ Most days I just wake up feeling a bit anxious and plod a solemn, narrow path of survival, coping. ‘I’ll have a coffee’, ‘I’ll try not to reach for my phone as soon as I stir, simpering and begging like a bad dog at a table for some digital tidbit, some morsel of approval, a text, that’ll do”
Yes, people make mistakes but that’s what humans do and I am under no obligation to hoard these errors and allow them to clutter my perception of the present. How is it for you?
Ask yourself ‘Do I really want to change or do I just want to justify staying the way that I am?' If you are ready, you are ready. If you are not, then good luck to you.
Crisis is almost a blessing providing cessation of a kind, and with it, the opportunity for change, renewal, even rebirth.
If you’re chugging through life in a job you dislike, a relationship that you are detached from, eating to cope, drinking, staring at Facebook or Instagram, trolling, smoking, and fruitlessly fantasising, you can sit glumly on that conveyor belt of unconscious discontent until it deposits you in your very early grave.
Consumerism and materialism are creating a culture of addiction. We are all on the scale somewhere because we are kept there by the age we live in. Addiction is the only way to cope with this Dystopian, dysfunctional world that we all live in right now. 85 percent of people are dysfunctional: Dysfunction has become the norm.
We call this process 'Recovery'; we recover the 'real you’ that you were meant to be.
I am now able to alleviate fear through prayer and meditation, and the continuing awareness that my life is not just my engagement with external phenomena.
Willingness is the glue of all of this. Everything we’re talking about here completely falls apart if you don’t have the willingness. If you don’t have the willingness to be honest or open-minded, then you’re going to be in trouble. Our own pride and ego can be the death of us, quite literally. I was fortunate enough to have the “gift of desperation”, and I hope anyone reading this has that gift as well. The Big Book describes it as the willingness that only a dying man would have, and that’s exactly what I had.
In recovery I need to keep my side of the street clean. In terms of honesty I started with small things like people asking me how I was doing. I’d tell my support group or open up in meetings and realise I don’t always have to wear a fake smile or mask on my face, and it’s alright for me to tell people, “Hey, I’m struggling today.” I began to see that I had irrational fears of being judged, and just putting my honest feelings out there helped me out a lot instead of just bottling them up.
I learned that there’s a huge difference between religion and spirituality. I learned that spirituality and a Higher Power can be just about anything.
What does recovery look like?
Recovery is s lifelong journey. But it's the best journey that you will ever take. Recovery via the 12 steps is the fastest proven route to spiritual awakening. The two features of 12 step recovery that make it a superpower are the unconditional love of the fellowship, and the clear directions to the spiritual experience.
The clear mirror
Self-care is work. Addiction is running away from your true Self. Addiction recovery works on your physical and emotional sobriety and connects you to your true Self. 7-10% of the population are alcoholic. Only 2 million people are in AA worldwide. That’s less than 0.3% of alcoholics being in recovery. And there are a multitude of other substance and behavioural addictions. Recovery is a bridge to normal living. It means to recover your Self. Recovery is a process of Self-acceptance not Self-improvement, as the myriad of 'self-help' books would have you believe. It is not your self that will help you (your ego - in fact ego is the cause of all your problems), it is your Higher Self, which is humble yet limitless. Recovery is an unfolding of who you are. It helps us to resize our Selves and celebrate who we truly are - the ego thinks it is huge. Why do you act so big, when you are not so small? It's hard to know why we are not grounded in our Selves. But this is the whole process of recovery. People have Real Personal Power if they don't give it away to their illness.
Recovery work takes consistent, lifelong effort, and time: The only thing that is instant in recovery meetings is the coffee. The problem is "Not the drinking (or whatever addiction you have) it's the thinking: The disease is between the two ears." It's your 'stinking thinking.' It's all in the mind. It's not our addiction that rules us, it's the thinking that leads to a need to numb the emotional pain. The addiction is simply a symptom. Recovery is knowing that right now you have abundance - you can stop looking for a destination: Surrender to Heaven is in this very moment and realise that it is a reality and that it is not related to other people, places, events, things, or achievements.
There is pain in the here and now: Yet you come to cherish the pain in the present moment. Pain is what your spiritual Self has not yet learned to digest. Our spiritual experience sends challenges to us as a good evolutionary pain to teach our spiritual Self to digest it. The degree of peace that you will feel is directly proportional to your surrender. Minimise your exposure to triggering situations, people, things, and circumstances. Respect your powerlessness and avoid those triggers.
The first step is to admit that you are powerless over your addiction and that your life has become unmanageable. We are all just human and we all want the same thing - spiritual bliss. We are born fine, then life defines us, and recovery refines us. "We must allow ourselves to be imperfect. It's ok to just BE and be good enough.
Charles Whitfield wrote that "Recovery is not an intellectual or rational process. Nor is it easy. It is an experiential process, consisting of excitement, discouragement, pain, and joy, with an overall pattern of personal growth. Recovery takes great courage." 97 percent of addicts overall don't even start the recovery process as they know that it is so painful emotionally, it requires vast amounts of work and a life-long commitment. Only 3% of addicts overall start 12 step-recovery and only half of those are successful. It's your bed, and you have to decide if you want to make it and lie in it. You will need a sponsor - a guide: You cannot do this alone. The sponsor can show you the door: You have to be ready and willing to walk through it. We had chaos every day as children. So now we need the daily tools of recovery...
Addicts need compassion from one another in order to change. This is a process of change that requires a good deal of self-compassion, which is neither stagnant nor permissive. We can just start by being a little kinder to ourselves and open to the possibility that life doesn’t have to be bloody awful.
I have no power at all over people, places and things, and if I ever for a moment mistakenly believe that I do, and act as if I do, pain is on its way. If I believe that I don't, then I have emotional sobriety. And that, my friends, is the basis of everything.
In a sense we re-write our past. We change our narrative. We reprogram ourselves. There is no objective history, this we know, only stories. Our character is the result of the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. This is my Truth.
Change is hard, that’s why we can’t do it alone and why it is vital that we have a foundation of hope.
“A theist is a person who has seen through the material and mechanical world and doesn’t commit suicide’. I like this quote. To see that it is all bullshit and not to clock off, that requires Faith. Only Faith will do. Only Faith. Even if you’re double certain that there is nothing but space and dumb molecules out there, clattering about into symphonic and faraway futures, if you believe that’s all there is and don’t check out, you are hardcore. You must really love money, drugs, or gambling! Again, good luck to you.
Are there things about yourself which you have never told anyone? Way back upon the creaky floors of your childhood, in your solitude, the shadows of your private mind, the things you’ve done and said and thought that compound and contain you: Shameful things, often solitary acts, but sometimes not, or the moments where reality itself seemed to tear as the people that you loved, your caregivers, looked into your eyes and told you ‘you are nothing’. And for a moment you stand there adjusting to the pain, the pain that someone could say that to you, and what that must mean about who you are.
The feeling you have that 'there's something else' is real. What happens when you don't follow the compulsion? What is on the other side of my need? The only way to find out is to not do it, and that is a novel act of Faith.
There is humility in confession. A recognition of flaws. To hear myself say out loud these shameful secrets meant I acknowledged my flaws. I also for the first time was given the opportunity to contextualise anew the catalogue of beliefs and prejudices, simply by exposing them to another, for the first time hearing the words ‘Yes, but have you looked at it this way?’ This was a helpful step in gaining a new perspective on my past, and my past was a significant proportion of who I believed myself to be. It felt like I had hacked into my own past: Unravelled all the erroneous and poisonous information I had unconsciously lived with and lived by and with necessary witness, the accompaniment of another man, reset the beliefs I had formed as a child and left unamended through unnecessary fear. Suddenly my fraught and frightened childhood became reasonable and soothed. ‘My mum was doing her best, so was my dad.’
Yes, people made mistakes but that’s what humans do, and I am under no obligation to hoard these errors and allow them to clutter my perception of the present. Yes, it is wrong that I was emotionally abused as a child but there is no reason for me to relive it unconsciously in the way I conduct my adult relationships. My perceptions of reality, even my own memories, are not objective or absolute, they are a biased account and they can be altered. It is possible to reprogram your mind. Not alone, because a tendency, a habit, an addiction will always reassert by its own invisible momentum, like a tide. With this program, with the support of others, and with this mysterious power, this new ability to change, we achieve a new perspective, and a new life.
I believe that what the 12 Steps and their encompassing philosophy will provide is nothing less than a solution to the dissatisfaction of living, to anyone with the balls to do the work. And it is work. Indeed it is a personal rebirth and the journey entails all manner of uncomfortable confrontations with who you truly are.
The material world is an illusion and its treasures all too temporal. That doesn’t mean you have to live as a monk, although that is one way out of it, it just means you can never quench your spiritual craving through material means. Gratitude for where you are and what you have is one important coordinate for retuning our consciousness. Similarly acceptance.
The very idea that you can somehow make your life alright by attaining primitive material goals – whether it’s getting the ideal relationship, the ideal job – the underlying idea, ‘if I could just get X, Y, Z, I would be okay’, is consistent and it is quite wrong.
Making a decision to ‘turn your life and your will over’ means you have acknowledged that your previous attempts to run your own life have failed. That you have had to resort to addictive behaviour to cope and now you cannot stop on your own steam. In making a decision we are conceding mentally and, hopefully, spiritually that we cannot do this alone anymore. That for me was the beginning of humility. To say ‘I need help’ is not an easy thing for many people, we’d prefer to manipulate people into meeting our needs or struggle along without them.
Most people in the West belong to a popular cult of individualism and materialism where the pursuit of our trivial, petty desires is a daily ritual.
Later examination of these principles revealed that self-centred, egotistical thinking is the defining attribute of the addictive condition.
Step 1 invites us to admit that we are using some external thing, a relationship, a drug, or a behaviour as the ‘power’ that makes our life liveable. It asks if this technique is making our life difficult. By admitting we are ‘powerless’ over whatever it is, we are saying we need a new power, that this current source of power is more trouble than it’s worth.
Behind our damaged perceptions there is usually a fear that pertains to a core belief. This core belief is a key line in the code of our personal misery: If we expose, address and alter it, we can be free.
I learned in recovery that I had no need to feel ashamed, that I could address the fear I had always fled, that I could re-evaluate my feelings of worthlessness.
In the Big Book in the page on Spiritual Experience (pg. 568) it states “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” Right before that quote, it talks about how the essentials of recovery are honesty, open-mindedness and willingness, and they are indispensable.
The Twelve Steps
The 12 Steps provide a structured and gradual process of recovery.
It works by helping change thoughts, behaviours and relationships related to addiction.
The process involves admitting you have a problem, seeking help from others, making amends for past harms, and living a new life.
The steps foster a sense of belonging and support. Addicts support other addicts. They share their experiences, strength, and hope; this helps reduce the isolation, shame, and stigma.
The shared approach helps your motivation and commitment, with regular attendance at meetings, often with support of a sponsor.
The steps offer healing, forgiveness, and a new direction in life. You’ll find tools and resources to cope with stress, cravings, and triggers.
The final step is to use your own sobriety to reach out and help other, still struggling alcoholics. This is service with love.
‘God’ in the 12 Steps absolutely does not have to be a religious entity. The purpose is to think of a Higher Power, such as Nature, or simply what happens when people come together to help each other.
The 12 Steps:
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
We’re entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
What are the benefits of recovery?
Recovery allows you to transform from being an egocentric wounded child to your Higher Self, who is open, honest, joyous and free.
Recovery has taken away the wishbone and given us a backbone.
Throughout your recovery, you use your challenges to propel you to a higher level of peace, understanding, and Self-love that would not have been possible otherwise. You trust that you are being led toward your greatest potential and highest possibility. When you accept yourself for who you are, and feel the love around you, you know that you are inherently worthy. You learn patience with yourself as you continue to grow, knowing that you are being guided with love by a strong program, and by a Higher Power of your own understanding, who is always with you.
Step Three reminds you that there is unconditional love available to you. By giving your will and your life over to the care of a Higher Power of your own understanding, you trust that this love and presence will remain in your life. In times of fear, you can imagine your Inner Child resting in warm, loving arms - feeling the comfort that you did not receive as a child. Recovery is a well of Grace that you can return to again and again and dip in self-acceptance, self-assurance, and love. Each time you do recovery work, you drink down God's love.
As it says in the Bible, James 2:17 "In the same way, Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."
Appendix II of the 12 steps - The Spiritual Experience
Russell Brand said that “Here is a postcard from the other side: Fame, luxury items and glamour are not real and cannot solve you, whether it’s a pair of shoes, a stream of orgies, a movie career or global adulation. They are just passing clouds of imaginary pleasure.”
The Promises of recovery
If you have decided to follow the suggestions of this program, a new life will begin to unfold within you. Along with this new life are promises that will guide and sustain you. They are manifesting among us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
We will regain control of our lives.
We will begin to feel dignity and respect for ourselves.
The loneliness will subside and we will begin to enjoy being alone.
We will no longer be plagued by an unceasing sense of longing.
In the company of family and friends, we will be with them in body and
mind.
We will pursue interests and activities that we desire for ourselves.
Love will be a committed, thoughtful decision rather than a feeling by which we are overwhelmed.
We will love and accept ourselves.
We will relate to others from a state of wholeness.
We will extend ourselves to nurture our own spiritual growth and that of
others.
We will make peace with our past and make amends to those we have
harmed.
We will be thankful for what has been given us, what has been taken away and what has been left behind.
Recovery is a simple programme for complex people
In order to get well, you need to abstain from your addiction on a daily basis, whatever it is; go to meetings, have a sponsor, and do the step work. Nothing else works, whatever your ego says. This is the solution.
Isn't it time that you took a seat?
I see you, I hear you, I see the divine in you.
Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you: Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you.
Namaste.
Olly
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I am delighted and enchanted to meet you. I coach men with 'Deep Coaching', 'Supercoaching', and Transformative Life Coaching (TLC). Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my email for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching on Zoom or in person.
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